About this journey

Rijeka station stands close to the port that gave the railway its reason to exist: when the continuous line between Budapest, Zagreb, Karlovac, and Rijeka opened on 25 June 1873, it was built to serve Rijeka's role as the main commercial port of the Kingdom of Hungary. The neoclassical arcaded station building that frames the departure — a 150 m structure designed by Budapest architect Ferenc Pfaff — was added between 1889 and 1891 and has been operated by Croatian Railways (HŽ) since 1991.

From Rijeka the route climbs inland on line M202, the same corridor that carried the first train out of Zagreb Main Station toward Rijeka at 10:35 a.m. on the day of that station's inauguration. As the line pushes northeast through the Croatian interior, it passes through the Ogulin area, a large karst valley sitting at around 320 m above sea level — the fifth largest karst valley in Croatia at 60 km². The journey ends at Ogulinski Hreljin, set within this inland karst landscape that contrasts markedly with the Adriatic port city where it began.